This study focuses on variables associated with the subordination of community government. A detailed discussion of the specific relationships is presented.

This article investigates whether external warfare, intercommunity trade, and female exogamy lead to more amicable intercommunity relationships. Intercommunity amicability is considered a historical facilitator of the large-scale integration of human groups. The absence of internal warfare is used as a measure for intercommunity amicability.

This article examines the origin of money. Anthropologists’ and economists’ theories are discussed and data supports a broad hypothesis that the existence of money is associated with level of economic development. The author further examines the emergence of internal, external, commercial and noncommercial moneys at high and low levels of economic development.

In order to explore the evolution of mutually beneficial transactions in large societies, this experimental study gathered data on the way people in societies of different subsistence types played games simulating interactions with anonymous others. The degree of fairness displayed by different players was correlated with measures of large-scale institutions, such as a market or world religion, that were present in a player’s society. Results suggest that “modern prosociality is not solely the product of an innate psychology, but also reflects norms and institutions that have emerged over the course of human history” (1480).

This study focuses on variables associated with the subordination of community government. A detailed discussion of the specific relationships is presented.

This article considers the consequences of modernization. Factor analysis is used to identify four stages of modernization: 1) changes in education, government, and trade; 2) changes in health, technology, and transportation; 3) changes in family, religion, and toilet; and 4) changes in behavior. The authors then consider five trends they expect to be associated with modernization and test whether they develop over the course of the four stages. Results indicate that these 5 trends—increased cultural complexity, female status, pacification, suicide, and social stress—are associated with only the first and fourth stages.

This article tests some conditions that may lead to the emergence of unilineal descent, focusing on unilocality and warfare. Unilineal descent is thought to be likely in a unilocal society without a centralized political system that is experiencing intra- or inter-societal warfare. The authors also posit that a "clan" system usually develops prior to a "lineage" system.

Researchers tackle the moral gods hypothesis which proposes that moral gods enabled large-scale societies to evolve. They use 414 societies spanning 10,000 years in Seshat: Global History Databank and code 51 measures of social complexity and four measures of moral gods. The findings of the present study challenge the moral gods hypothesis. In the societies studied, complex societies appear to precede moral gods rather than the inverse of moral gods preceding complex societies.

This chapter investigates the various socioeconomic variables that are associated with matrilineal and patrilineal institutions. Several variables were found to correlate significantly with matrilineal and patrilineal institutions.

The present study examines the validity of Robert Redfield's one-dimensional "folk-urban continuum" in a sample of 70 pre-industrial societies. As hypothesized, a factor analysis revealed that there is more than a single overriding factor about the "folk-urban continuum." These variables include kinship organization, size-complexity, and relative isolation. The author also contends there is an inverse relationship between relative isolation and size-complexity.